


Escape from New York: Zayn

by FromFanToStan



Category: One Direction (Band), zayn malik - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Reunions, Slow Romance, Smut but only in the past, Zayn at the Farm AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 12:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21208373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromFanToStan/pseuds/FromFanToStan
Summary: The events of Escape from New York, but from Zayn's POV. Harry gets drunk and comes out to the farm. Nostalgia ensues. If you've read EFNY, this one will seem fairly different, the way memories are from different perspectives. I hope it still shows the dynamic of post-canon Zayn at the Farm AU Zarry.Usual disclaimers, although I would donate a kidney to see these two make up IRL.





	Escape from New York: Zayn

His own “Pillowtalk” pierces through layers of deep sleep. At first, Zayn just incorporates it into his dream, but now Harry is in Gigi’s role, and instead of just holding him lightly like Gigi Harry is grinding against him suggestively while the director yells, “Cut! Cut! Jesus, you two.” Zayn is about to suggest they get a room when his brain shakes him awake. It’s his  _ phone _ , it’s Gigi, the ringtone he assigned to her years ago and has never changed, and it’s fucking dark o’clock. He reaches out an arm, blindly, and shoves the phone at his ear. “What.”

“Zaynie! Aren’t you up yet, doing your farmer things?”

“You’re in jail or someone died. Otherwise, bye.”

“Wait, Zayn! Jesus. Harry’s probably on his way. He might be. No, he is. I told him you missed him, and then he called a car and said he was coming to see you. So.”

There are peals of laughter in the background, and then Gigi’s laughter joins, its sound like wind chimes, the first thing he fell in love with.

“Alright then.” Zayn does not want to talk to Gigi about this. It’s his fault, mentioning Harry like he did last time they talked, but he only goes on his socials maybe once a week, and he has #harrystyles blocked on Instagram and Twitter. He just wanted to know, is all. Like, how he was. How he is. Well. He guesses he’ll find out soon enough.

Zayn pulls on flannel pj bottoms and the henley he was wearing last night before bed. He still sleeps naked after all this time, even in winter. He loves the feeling of being weighted down by blankets.  _ Or by Harry,  _ his brain helpfully adds. Fuck.

He’s read a bit,  _ Good Omens  _ so he can watch the show proper, whilst sitting on the sofa with the front door open a crack so he can hear if a car pulls up, but after staring at the same page for close to ten minutes he’s given it up as a bad idea. Instead, he’s got his guitar out and is noodling. A little snippet of a melody has been floating around in his head, and he tries to ground it in notes and chords on the guitar. No dice. He’s too antsy and nervous. Finally he rests his head on a sofa pillow and goes back to sleep, in spite of his nerves. He awakes with a start to hear his regular alarm tone going off on the coffee table in front of him. No Harry. Gigi was drunk. Probably Harry isn't even coming.

Zayn goes into the kitchen, thinking of the tasks he and Connor need to get done today. His “hired hand” he calls him, even though Connor knows everything about running a farm and Zayn knows nothing. He makes coffee, strong, black as pitch, hopefully full of caffeine after a disrupted night of sleep, then he takes a mug back into the sitting room, thinking to drink a cup and try again with  _ Good Omens _ .

He hears the gate swing open first. His heart pounds, but he schools it into calm through breathing deeply. It might be Connor, here early because he couldn’t sleep. Sometimes he’ll do that, and they’ll eat together. It might be the Post Office bringing a parcel, even though it’s barely dawn. He should be sitting on the porch, shouldn’t he. He forgets his coffee.

He’s in his favorite rocker, having tousled his hair artfully and quickly brushed his teeth in the downstairs bathroom. He remembers to look sleepy. It’s Harry; he knows it is. It’s not a truck making its way up the gravel drive but a car, a long car if Zayn is judging the space between the wheels accurately. Yep. A limo. Jesus, can’t Harry even just show up on his own for once? Ah well.  _ Harry _ . He should have been the one with Gigi. Too bad they hated each other.

The limo is low and black, and Zayn sees it’s a Lincoln Town Car. He almost laughs, because the Harry he has built up in his head over the past years would be riding in a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari limo. The Town Car is so basic. He might have ordered it, if he were in charge of the world and could have commanded that Harry come here. He guesses Harry didn’t have much choice at midnight or whenever he ordered the car and driver.

His head emerges first. He’s wearing something godawful, suspendered pants with nine huge buttons over a flap or summat, a sheer loose blouse with flowy sleeves. All in pink, for fuck’s sake. Boots that add four inches to his height. Since when does Harry care how tall he is? 

He stumbles a little, getting out, and Zayn feels something, not sympathy exactly, because he ran out of that for Harry ages ago, but a bit of fellow-feeling, of the awkwardness of encounters when you want them but know you shouldn’t. He has stopped himself more than once when Gigi has texted him:  _ im at a party and harry is here _ . Gigi is always trying to stir things up. She thinks that him and Harry are in love and just need prodding to realize it. She doesn’t get it that they hate each other.

Harry is rumpled, and as he comes up to the porch, Zayn sees that his eyes are red and bruised looking. His hair stands up on his head--it’s at an awkward length, just like everything else about Harry at the farm. The limo, the party clothes, Harry himself. They all are so out of place in front of his white-painted farmhouse with its green shutters, as if a Ritz Hotel suddenly appeared next to the horse barn.

Harry stops with one foot on the first porch step. Time stops with him. He looks objectively terrible, unshaven, tired, wearing last night’s clothes like he’s doing a shame walk, but he still glows from within. He’s always had it.

This new, humbler Harry touches his heart, makes him take pity on him. He finds himself apologizing before he ever says hello. 

“I never said goodbye to you. I felt bad about it, but then…” He feels himself shrug. He’s made himself uncomfortable. What happened to  _ hello _ ? Or  _ what are you doing way out here? _ But they both know. “Yeah, anyway. Gigi texted you were probably coming. I guess the only question is why.”

Harry looks at him in the way he always has, as though he can see inside Zayn’s heart. It’s more than Zayn can do right now. He feels stirred up, anxious, muddled. He doesn’t like this.

“I cried the night it was announced,” Harry says simply, and Zayn is yanked back in time to the night when he was on the plane home, knowing it had been his last show, crying the whole time himself. No one knows about that night. No one. He’s not bringing it up now either.

He becomes aware that Harry is still talking, one foot on the step and the other resting improbably on the uneven ground in front of Zayn’s house, in what are probably Gucci heels. Harry is saying that he’s unhappy, that nothing has meaning for him right now, that the tour was the last time he felt good, and Jesus, that was a year ago.

Zayn feels the defensiveness slide away from him. Harry is unhappy. Harry needs him. Everything in his heart says  _ help Harry,  _ because for five years that’s what his heart said every time he saw Harry in any distress, until finally he had spent so much time looking out for the other boys and Harry, but mostly Harry, that he saw how little he’d looked out for himself.

He says something dumb, probably. 

“Do you feel like, er, you’re making the decisions for yourself? This is so stupid. Of course he is. He’s Harry Fucking Styles, and his team works for  _ him _ . But he presses on anyway. “That your decisions, they’re coming from your heart? Because you always had a big heart, Harry.” He finds he means it. Harry is generous, at least until he is not. But it takes a lot to make him turn away. Just look at his loyalty to Xander, that fucker.

“No, I’m not making any of my own decisions. They bring decisions to me, and I’m supposed to be able to say no, but I see Jeff looking at me, or he’ll call in Rob if they think I’m being difficult, and I always say yes.”

Zayn’s fingers move at his side. He wants to hug Harry tightly to his chest, to run his hands through his dirty hair, push it back from his red-rimmed eyes. Instead he hugs himself.

“Do you think I’d be happy, if I made my own decisions, Zayn? Because I have no idea what I’d decide. I’m not like you.”

Zayn thinks  _ that’s rich, coming from you, since you starting leaving the band a full year before I got so sick it was all  _ I _ could do. _ He thinks,  _ yeah, Harry, you’re not like me, you only care about your image.  _ He thinks,  _ I don’t love you anymore. We never talked. We were never friends.  _ He thinks,  _ you’re still beautiful, though. You’re still the boy I fell in love with. _

_ “ _ What are you saying, Harry? That I know what I’m doing? That I make decisions easily? You have no idea.” He shakes his head, thinking how little Harry knows him after all.

“I’m sorry, babe,” Harry whispers, and Zayn is shattered by this endearment.

“Nothing to be sorry about, Haz. We don’t know each other any more.”

He sees Harry soften too. He’s still standing one foot on the porch step as though he’ll bolt at any second, and Zayn doesn’t want him to bolt. He admits, “I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, babe. I just keep putting one foot in front and staying away from that life that made me sick.”

And now that they’ve both said  _ babe _ , they’ve both acknowledged the past in that shorthand they have, the air between them adds electrons, as though a storm is coming. Zayn doesn’t think he can keep his hands away from Harry much longer. He wants to pull the straps of the suspenders down, and pop the buttons on that silly shirt, and rub his own rough hands against Harry’s smooth, muscled chest.

“But, are you happy out here? For the most part?” Harry’s voice is hesitant, quiet, as though Zayn’s answer matters, as though he really wants to know.

“Yeah, I am, in most ways, most of the time. It’s hard work. It’s dead nice, though, using my body without thinking about where I’m standing or what it looks like.” They laugh a little, and something eases.

“Come in then? I’ve got coffee on. Do you still take it black?” Zayn turns his back on Harry, because his expression is showing too much. He thinks Harry will follow him. He always has done. Harry has a submissive streak, he does. It’s part of why he’s so amazing in bed. Zayn flashes briefly on Harry on his belly, ass in the air, letting Zayn pound into him, moaning, “harder, harder, Zayn.” He sees Harry holding out his tongue for Zayn’s come, Harry pulling off Zayn’s dick to ask, eyes shyly cast upward, “Is it good, babe? Am I doing it right?”

He can’t think about those things, but he can make coffee. He hears the screen door squeaking open and closed as Harry does follow him. He really needs to oil that hinge. He hears Harry ask another question, more intimate, even, than the first. 

“I’ve missed you, Zayn. Have you missed me, even a little?”  _ Oh, Harry. If only you knew.  _

Zayn forces his voice to be even. He forces himself to sound like any of this is easy to say. “Course I do, Haz. I missed you as soon as I left. More lately, since Gigi and I….” He waves a hand, helpless to say what he and Gigi were or are. “I keep my body busy, but my mind goes where it wants. Sometimes it goes to the past, and I know I’d do things different if I could.” 

This is as much as he can say. He grinds beans for a new pot. “Do you still take it black, babe?” The endearment, now doubled, seems loud in the quiet room.

“Once you’ve had black….” Zayn turns around, ready to scold Harry for his insensitive remark, because sometimes Harry is like this, but he sees he’s smirking, like  _ I know, Zayn, it’s just a joke, remember how I used to say once you’d had coffee with cream you’d never drink it any other way? And how we both knew I was talking about you, no matter who else was in the room? _

They can still do it, then. They can still talk without words. This is surprising. Good, but he never would have thought.

Harry’s gaze turns serious. His disconcerting habit of saying nothing and then saying everything is in full force, making Zayn reel. “I’m sorry for the things I said, Zee. We were always so tired, always under so much pressure. I didn’t know what you were going through. I couldn’t see it. I’m sorry. We were a mess.”

“It’s okay, Haz, really. It’s in the past.” He touches Harry’s shoulder, feels the electrical current jump from him to Harry and back again. They still have it, this fire. He never would have thought.

“Should I send the driver away for a bit? Do you want me to stay a while?” Zayn stifles the first  _ yes _ , but then he can’t. He wants to talk to him, to know why he’s unhappy, to know if it has anything to do with him.

Instead he says easily, “Yeah, that might be nice. Maybe he could go into town, to West Mifflin? That way if we come to blows you wouldn’t have to wait long for him to come get you.”

He sees Harry open his mouth to protest and then shut it when he sees Zayn is smiling at him. He smiles back. For another minute, they are Haz and Z, friends, occasional lovers, maybe more.

They drink the too-strong coffee. Harry tells him funny stories about Gigi. As always, he reads Zayn and knows just how snarky Zayn wants him to be. It feels good, to see Gigi through Harry’s eyes, to see her desire for attention as something he can scorn.

He makes them toast; they have some with homemade jam from Zayn’s neighbor and boiled eggs from Zayn’s own chickens. He’s proud to be able to offer this simple food, all made within a few miles of the farm. He sends Harry off for a shower, with his biggest track pants and a clean toothbrush. He tries not to think about how Harry probably won’t be wearing any underwear since his are yesterday’s and the breadth of Zayn’s narrow hips could always be contained inside Harry’s pelvic bones. He washes the coffee mugs and plates, listening to the strange sound of the guest shower running. Zayn goes out to the barns. Horses first, feed, and now they are in the paddock when Zayn again hears the gate swing open and this time a truck, Connor’s old F-150, coming up the drive. Zayn moves easily to meet him at the truck, guarding Harry’s presence without thinking. He asks Connor to take the goats out to the forest edge, to milk the cow, to collect the eggs and leave the basket on the porch. He reminds him where he’s put the rototiller and which fields need working. Connor is nodding, tolerant as always of Zayn’s need to remind when Connor made the plans in the first place.

All the while, he feels rather than sees Harry’s eyes looking out the bedroom or sitting room window. He doesn’t know where he is, just that he’s looking.

Zayn knows it’s petty, but he’s glad that Connor is young and handsome, that Harry will probably think with his dirty mind that they’re fucking. He would never--but he likes imagining Harry thinkin those things, being a little jealous.

By the time Zayn has finished his “instructions” and fed Stitch on the porch so he can go with Connor, by the time he unlaces the heavy work boots he’s put on and returned them to their place by the front door, he’s happy to see a wet-haired Harry stretched out on the couch, looking over stuffed into Zayn’s tee shirt--and yes, that is a good look, way better than the fluffy shirt--and trackies. Zayn sits beside the couch in the comfortable arm chair that came with the place, tucking his feet under him. “So, Hazza. Why’d you take your top off for Rolling Stone last fall? It was hot, I’ll admit it, but I thought you weren’t doing that sort of thing? I mean, Gigi said you weren’t.”

“You looked, did you? Did you wank over those pictures, Z? You can tell me.”

No, Zayn can’t. He won’t. “I did look. I go into the drugstore, don’t I? You were hard to miss.”

“Mmm, yeah, I bet. Probably you only looked at the cover. D’ya want to see the rest? I’ve got them on my phone. What? They sent them to me, Zayn? As, like, proofs or something. So I could pick the ones I liked.”

And so they talk, in this way that is a bit flirting and a bit catching up, until it’s lunch time, and Lilia is knocking on the door to ask can she bring over the lunch from her place, and does Zayn have company, as she tries to peer around the door sill to see who’s stretched out on Zayn’s sofa.

Zayn turns to Harry. “Will you stay for lunch, Harry? There’s always lots. Come meet Lilia.”

Harry drags himself off the very comfortable sofa, actually long enough that he can stretch completely out, conscious that Zayn’s trackies show his ankles. “Hi, Lilia, I’m Harry. I’m afraid I just dropped in. I hope it’s okay if I stay?” Lilia looks from him to Zayn and back again.

“Oh of course, I’m so happy Mr. Zayn has a fren here. I tell him all the time a handsome man like him should have company all the time. He’s too solo, right, Mr. Zayn?”

Zayn is blushing, but Harry smiles at him so fondly that he thinks it’s okay anyway.

“Will you stay the night, Harry?” he asks as Lilia goes back to her little house behind his for the food. “I want to know who you’re dating and what the new music is about and maybe apologize for a few more things. I will if we drink some wine, anyway. Yes, I drink wine now! Don’t be a knob. I’m not uncivilized because I live in the country. Don’t be such a city boy, Hazza.”

Harry laughs, agrees, squeezes Zayn’s hand as they stand at the door. Then he just keeps holding Zayn’s hand, like it’s something they just do, like five years haven’t passed since they touched each other at all.

Zayn, emboldened, says innocently, “We can have a proper sleepover, Haz.” He feels Harry’s eyes turn to him, but he keeps looking ahead steadily. He can’t. His desire will be too obvious.

He hopes that Harry remembers what they always meant when they invited each other for a sleepover. He hopes it with all his heart.

__   
  


  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this installment of the ongoing Zayn at the Farm AU. I love the thought of Zayn out there with his goats and chickens and home studio, making beautiful music and (of course) entertaining Harry when he can get away.


End file.
